Pain and Glory (2019)

Ah, my first Pedro Almodóvar viewing in five years. It's also easily his most recent film that I've seen, with 2006's Volver a distant second. Given that P&G draws inspiration from the writer-director's own life, according to an interview on the DVD, I can guess why he hasn't directed much of note in between.

Scenes jump around among the '60s, the '80s, and what I take to be roughly the present, but always in Spain. As a kid (Asier Flores), Salvador "Salva" Mallo is quite the achiever, but he lives in a backwater village of caves, and his mother (Penélope Cruz) and father (Raúl Arévalo) see the seminary as his only affordable means of education, much to his chagrin. As an adult (Antonio Banderas), he becomes a film director, but I wouldn't say he's any happier. Certainly not by the time he has a ton of illnesses at once, the rarest and most serious of which makes it hard for him to swallow even liquids.

If you think that the literal and sometimes figurative pain in his life is good for Salva's creative spirit, think again. He's in a slump, and he doesn't want to be seen in public in such a sorry state. Although he had a falling-out with a lead actor (Asier Etxeandia) over the latter's use of heroin, Salva has now taken a page from his book. (Thankfully, Almodóvar hasn't.)

A minor plot point concerns Salva's orientation, which might explain in part why he didn't want to be a priest and prays only in the throes of pain. We don't meet his only known lover (Leonardo Sbaraglia) until after they've long gone their separate ways, so I'm not adding a sex tag. We do, however, get a full frontal male nudity when a handyman (César Vicente), who also learns letters from and draws young Salva, bathes immodestly in his presence. I wonder if that was supposed to be the moment of Salva's awakening.

As you may have gathered, there's not much of an arc, even by Almodóvar standards. For the most part, Salva's problems don't seem to go anywhere until the end. The movie presents more of a portrait than a full-fledged story. I understand why it gets compared with 8 1/2. Unfortunately, I've had little use for 8 1/2.

I still like P&G a bit better. To call it poetic or pretty is a stretch, but it gets fairly strong without ever going overboard. I could take interest in examining a life rather different from my own, not least in the prospect of making a modern home of a hillside cave with a barred open-air skylight over one room (does rain spread across every floor?).

If this is the last Almodóvar piece I ever watch, it makes for a respectable conclusion. It's the sort of tale best reserved for late in one's career.